Thursday, February 19, 2015

Resigned

Oregon Governor Kitzhaber resigned the other day. He denies doing anything wrong and I am inclined to believe him. He probably did do something wrong. Seems that you can't go outside these days without getting crossed up with some kind of tom-fool rule. But I doubt it was bad enough to force him to resign. Looks like I was wrong again.
At first I thought the scandal mongering was being orchestrated by the Governor's enemies. Why else would they be making so much fuss about this stuff? Then I realized we didn't really need anyone to be directing this assault, the media were perfectly capable of stirring it up all by themselves. If the governor did anything wrong, it was that he failed to squash this media frenzy. Maybe his friends are not as powerful as they need to be, or maybe they underestimated how big an impact this scandal would have on 'public opinion'.
I think what we've got here is a fight between the 3rd order reformation and the 4th order reformation. People don't want to deal with any of their real problems, so they'll pick on someone else for chewing gum in public:

I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the
edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said "Stop! don't do it!"
"Why shouldn't I?" he said. I said, "Well, there's so much to live for!"
He said, "Like what?" I said, "Well...are you religious or atheist?" He
said, "Religious." I said, "Me too! Are you christian or buddhist?" He
said,
"Christian." I said, "Me too! Are you catholic or protestant?" He said,
"Protestant." I said, "Me too! Are you episcopalian or baptist?" He
said, "Baptist!" I said,"Wow! Me too! Are you baptist church of god or
baptist church of the lord?" He said, "Baptist church of god!" I said,
"Me too! Are you original baptist church of god, or are you reformed
baptist church of god?" He said,"Reformed Baptist church of god!" I
said, "Me too! Are you reformed baptist church of god, reformation of
1879, or reformed baptist church of god, reformation of 1915?" He said,
"Reformed baptist church of god, reformation of 1915!" I said, "Die,
heretic scum", and pushed him off. -- Emo Phillips